The General Chat Thread (2024)

Last night was a helluva on-call night.

First, I was already scheduled to be online at 3AM for some maintenance - not my maintenance, but I had to confirm that my stuff still worked after some server techs did their maintenance.

I contacted one of them earlier in the day and asked if the 3AM time was a hard start time or an estimate:

“It’s an estimate, based on what we saw doing this in our development and testing areas.”

“Ok…so you want me up and on at 3AM, but you may finish earlier, or you may finish later?”

“Yep, it all depends.”

“Why don’t you just page me out or call me when you’re done? That way, if you finish early, you’re not waiting for me to get on at 3AM, and if you finish late, I’m not sitting there awake with my thumb up my…nose waiting on you to finish.”

“Nah, we have a meeting set up already…just join that at 2:30AM and see where we are.”

Sigh…. common sense isn’t that common. 😞

Went to bed at 10PM to try and get a little sleep - got paged for a separate issue at 1:30AM. That took until 2AM to fix.

Then, I figured it made more sense to just wait until 2:30AM and see where the admins were with their stuff. Got on that meeting, they weren’t even close, stayed on until 3AM, still not even close to being done, went back to bed.

They called me at 4:15AM to say they were done. Sure wish someone had suggested that earlier… :whistling:

Up to do my bit for that, was done by 4:30AM, back in bed…and I got paged for a separate issue at 5:30AM, and that took about 20 minutes to fix.

At that point, I just stayed up, but fell asleep sitting up on the couch, until MrsT got up at around 8AM, looking for coffee.

🥱
 
TastyReuben said:
I’m about to the point of dropping off our brotherly group chat, because all it is all day long is, “Damn, I sure am glad I’m retired,” and “Ain’t being retired great,” and “I sure wish I’d have retired years ago.” - it’s enough to make me sick. :laugh:
Click to expand...
…and here’s what I mean - one of my brothers just posted this on our shared chat:

Daytona 500 canceled until 4 o’clock on Monday. No big deal for the Bros Elite because we are retired and can watch it no problem when everyone else is working

Now, I don’t care to watch the Daytona 500, and if I wanted to, I could, because it’s a holiday on Monday, but even if it were a workday, I work from home.

It’s that little dig about “we are retired” that starts to irritate me, because things like that show up every day, a few times a day.

I need new brothers, ones younger than me, so I can bust their chops all day! :laugh:
 
TastyReuben said:
I may not be interpreting this the way you intended, but I’m not someone who generally looks too far ahead, so when I chose this career path (and it was my choice), it was to serve an immediate need (the choice came with a relocation for training and a second relocation for placement afterward).

I was military, junior enlisted, working a low-effort job (which suited me just fine), and I’d been stationed there for nearly five years at that point and was ready to leave.

A big reason I’d joined the military to begin with was because I saw it as my best chance to get to the UK, which was my main goal at that point (I was 19 when I joined), and five years in, I was stuck in upstate NY, with no prospect of leaving anytime soon.

That’s when a call went out for volunteers to retrain into a specialized IT course, 18 months of training in Texas, at least one round of deployment to install a new personnel accounting system somewhere in the world (mine ended up being Northern California), followed by a permanent posting somewhere else.

I did see it as a much better career move, in or out of the military, but my main reason was that final move - I intended to figure out a way to get that final move to be somewhere in England (where we had eight air bases at the time)…and that’s what I did, landing at RAF Upper Heyford, followed by time at RAF Alconbury. Mission accomplished.

I liked my job, for the most part, then. There’s a lot of structure and every last detail of how to do a job is written down in highly-specific training materials, and I liked that. When I left the military after nearly 11 years, that was my hardest adjustment by far, the lack of structure and the lack of regulation/oversight. It was like being turned loose with all the responsibility and none of the safety net of documentation and regulation.

Also, believe it or not, I worked far, far less overtime in the military than I have in the private sector. Not even close.

All that, I guess, was just a long way of saying I’ve never seen work as anything other than a way to earn money to pay for food, clothing, shelter, and a bit of fun.

The thing is, no matter what the work, the fact that it’s work makes it unpleasant. I worked a side job as a professional musician for about eight years or so, did it properly, worked at giving lessons, performing live, and doing studio work, and that should have been a blast, right?

Wrong. As soon as it became attached to earning money, it became a chore, and before long, I resented playing music. The work aspect took the fun out of it. It goes back to not being in charge of your own schedule, because (to me, anyway, and especially if you have others involved, like employees or coworkers), you’re not always free to turn down an opportunity to earn money, and there’d always be those times where I’d book something and think, “Oh, that’ll be a nice place to play,” and as it got closer and closer, that resentment would bubble up, and not because there was anything wrong with the job, except that it was a commitment, and now it had to be done, and that just went against my character. As soon as I have to do something, I don’t care what it is…I don’t want to do it. I see it as an encroachment and I resent it. Strongly.

I’ve half-joked in the past, probably on here, that I could be the Lead Pizza & Beer Inspector, and I’d be complaining about the job before the first week was out, simply because I had to be somewhere at a predetermined time to drink beer and eat pizza.

In short - for me, there’s no such thing as work & fun. They cannot coexist in my life. It’s matter and antimatter and Star Trek taught me a long time ago that those two don’t mix. :laugh:

Whew, that was long!
Click to expand...
I understand completely. I think turning something you love into a job can destroy the love you have for it.

I'm not sure what you describe quite fits with what I'm getting at.
Sounds like you've handed over your time work wise fully acknowledging you're doing it for the money needed to live (as the majority of us do).
It might sound dramatic to some but it is a form of voluntary slavery in as much as you go there of your own free will but you don't want to be there, it's based on needing tokens for food and shelter so go there you must and that's where the resentment creeps in that the majority of your waking hours are spent doing things you don't want to do.

I'm more talking about staying in situation you should leave due to feeling you have to tough it out. Like someone staying in a job they hate, or putting up with family non-sense out of a sense of obligation/perseverance when they should probably have upped sticks long before.

You see it with elderly divorcees. They stayed married because they think they should and there's some late dawning that this is it, I'm not happy, I (or you) have to go!
 
TastyReuben said:
…and here’s what I mean - one of my brothers just posted this on our shared chat:

Daytona 500 canceled until 4 o’clock on Monday. No big deal for the Bros Elite because we are retired and can watch it no problem when everyone else is working
Click to expand...
Thats just not nice!

I wouldn't be able to resist saying you lazy arses should try and do something constructive with your time, brains rot easily you know 😘
 
The Velvet Curtain said:
The search is continuing, helicopter, drones, divers and now the national media are setting up in my street to do their live broadcasts this evening. The worst bit is the family of the little boy are just standing in the road, waiting.
Click to expand...
That sounds so horrible for them - going through that and all the media attention on top of it. I’m hoping for a good end to the whole thing.
 
TastyReuben said:
I’m really hoping for one of those miracle endings where the kid pops up downriver on the other side.
Click to expand...

The floods are so bad and more rain is forecast so unfortunately there will be no happy ending.
Yesterday and this morning our local pub opened up at 8am, the lounge and snug are reserved solely for the emergency services.
The comedy festival is still on and a show is scheduled for tomorrow evening, I doubt anyone would have a problem if the show was cancelled out of respect for the family.
 
Having the flu again for the umpteenth time this year, seeing a specialist in internal medicine about that coming monday. I have had a fever on and off for the past three months without a clear explanation. But now I am having just typical fly symptoms on top of it due to taking immuno suppresive medication. I am functioning because I can hardly stay in bed all the time I am ill, but it's exhausting.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom